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[nineteenfortyfive]

[Is this not about a medical thing, this time? Seems so. Claire's a bit more relaxed than she usually is when using the network, and it might have something to do with that glass of wine in front of her.]

It's my fifty-first birthday this weekend. Do I win the award for most elderly amongst us refugees?

It's hard to believe I was in my late twenties when I first came to Olympia. Stasis is... strange, to say the least, but I'm sure any of us here for an amount of time realize that.

[Now, let's see who's going to be a smartass and make a grandma comment. She's waiting. It's there, in her smile. Do it.]

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[nineteenfortyfive]

[Claire remembers. Her uncle died because of the Blitz, and she frowns a bit at that memory and the one of returning to Olympia after the dragon was no longer a threat.]

Yes. So, be glad you missed it.

[deadthenred]

[ Bucky had been in Scotland for most of '41, only stationed in London after Pearl Harbor. ]

I do miss it. London, I mean.

[ For a long time, the thing he wanted most was for it to be 1944 again. It was strange, and maybe selfish of him, but— life wasn't perfect, then, but he knew what it was about. ]

I only went back once after the war.

[nineteenfortyfive]

[Sometimes the heart settles on a time and that's what it wants. She'd give a lot to go back to Lallybroch before Culloden. It's when she was happiest, she thinks, even with the recent loss of her child heavy on her heart. She had a home, and a family, and she was with the man she loved, making a life.

Boston had been a poor substitute, but she had Bree.]

And then where?

[deadthenred]

[ For Bucky, it was Paris, 1944. Even with all the death it took to get him there, to get everyone there. ]

Where did I go? After the war?

[ He doesn't mind reminiscing but also isn't sure how to answer the question. ]

[nineteenfortyfive]

If you don't mind. I'm just making conversation. [She offers him a small smile.] I don't mean to pry.

[deadthenred]

No, it's fine, I don't mind. [ He has tried to keep his own policy of openness, his own personal glasnost, but in his experience beginning with a long list of all the things he feels guilty for doesn't go over well for anyone. ] I've been all over, really. Sorta the nature of the service. [ As true of the KGB as it is of the US Army and SHIELD. ]

But I was living in New York, I guess, most recently.

How about you? [ Conversation. He can do this. ]

[nineteenfortyfive]

[She can understand any apprehension. She's seen it before, and she's not one to share too much about those days, either.]

A similar story here. After the war I [time] traveled, and then I settled in Boston for twenty years. Went from a combat nurse to a surgeon and a mother.

[deadthenred]

Boston, huh? The Sox finally won it in 2004. [ This was one of the very important things he researched when he was finally himself again. ]

Being a surgeon and a mother are both… real accomplishments. [ For a real life. ]

[nineteenfortyfive]

2004. I'd be 86. Had things turned out differently, I might still be around.

[Not that Claire had much interest in sports. Being a surgeon and a mother took most of her time--the former, unfortunately, more than the latter. She built a good life for Bree, but the price she paid for it was time with her daughter.]

I can only imagine there are plenty more women practicing medicine in 2004.

[deadthenred]

Yeah. It isn't— perfect. But it's a lot better. [ Bucky means it. He met a lot of extremely capable women during the war— nurses and soldiers both, and it flipped his teenage perspective quite a bit. ]

Anyway, 86, huh? So you are older than me after all.

[nineteenfortyfive]

It's what I've been hearing. It's good to keep hearing it.

[That next comment coaxes a laugh out of her.]

Oh, you're welcome, then. I was born in 1918, if the math's too hard for you.

[deadthenred]

[ He laughs a little, too. ]

I'll have you know I was the fastest cashier at Milton's corner grocer when before they got computers that let a person cheat. [ Also before he picked a fight with the stockboy, whoops. ]

1925. When I got here I was twenty.

[nineteenfortyfive]

Cheat? Now you sound your age.

[1925? Good lord.]

Practically an infant, if you were twenty before, even when I wasn't yet thirty.

[Nevermind her daughter is twenty, currently.]

[deadthenred]

I felt old.

[ Doesn't everyone at twenty? ]

[nineteenfortyfive]

My daughter is twenty.

And now we all feel old.

[deadthenred]

My kid sister has children who're older than you know. [ He's never met them, never introduced himself, but he's done his creepy spy homework. ] I don't know how that makes me feel.

[ So, moving on. ]

Do you miss her?

[ Her daughter, he means. He hasn't put together that she's here, because most people's families aren't. ]

[nineteenfortyfive]

Not so much these days. I'm lucky that she and my boy are awake, too.

[She can't be bothered to specify that Fergus is adopted. He looks enough like her, and he has the Fraser name while Bree doesn't. It's a complicated household.]

[deadthenred]

Oh. [ Whoops. ] I'm happy for you.

Though this is a hell of a place to grow up.

[nineteenfortyfive]

She's done most of the growing up already, at twenty. Thank God. I wouldn't want a fourteen year old in my care here.

[deadthenred]

Has anyone woke up that young?

[ He was twenty, too, and really, far from a kid. But younger than that… ]

[nineteenfortyfive]

I've met a few that seem to be that young. I don't know factually, however.

[She adopts enough without knowing exactly how young they are.]

[deadthenred]

It's odd. More people live to see five than eight-five. There oughta be more kids here, unless there's something in the programming.

[ Or however they're fishing them out of the time stream. ]

[nineteenfortyfive]

I've wondered that, too. As well as a notable lack of people producing children among us.

[deadthenred]

[ He has to run a hand through his hair, at that. ]

Not all of us are tryin'.

[ But as he thinks about it more, he agrees that it's odd. ]

[nineteenfortyfive]

I suspect most people don't try for children. As for... the rest of it, even if only a small portion of the population were engaging in baby making activities... it's been over a year. Life finds a way, you know.

[Except not here.]

Must be the Storm.